


The Art of Being Ordinary

by ShrimpForYou



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF, mcyt
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Book Club, Ghost Wilbur Soot, High School, No beta we die like tommyinnit (video blogging rbf), Other, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:56:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29820438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShrimpForYou/pseuds/ShrimpForYou
Summary: Wilbur Soot is an average student.He gets average grades, has average hobbies, goes to all the popular clubs. Sure, he has talents, but he's invisible compared to the rest of his class.He is ordinary.There is nothing strange or interesting about him, there's nothing that is considered intriguing, he's just... there."Wilbur! Look what I found!!"Well.The ghost that is haunting him is strange, I guess.(or; Wilbur Soot suffers through High School with a too-friendly ghost looming over his shoulder and the weight of exams tugging on the other.)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 38





	The Art of Being Ordinary

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Thanks for reading this fic :> I wrote this whilst listening to Chirp on repeat... heh. The chapters are likely going to have sporadic updates, so strap in if you want to read this!!  
> I couldn't figure out how to colour it unless it was in the Homestuck skin, so... :( if you can help please let me know!  
> If you want to message me my discord is Shrimpforyou#7970!! I will be tagging triggers so if you have anything specific you want me to tag, go ahead and ask!!  
> TW: There's a bit of dissociating, and a character is on the urge of crying. Stay safe!!  
> Now that's been said, on with the story!

High school is boring.

Many people would agree on this; it’s why there’s so many clubs, they’d explain. It’s to cover up the boredom of class. The hallways are always empty and lacking, even when the classes are queueing up to enter their lesson. Their shoes would squeak and their uniform would ruffle but it would always be so _quiet_. The only thing that would liven the place up, they would tell you, is when they get to witness a fight out in the courtyard, cheering the students on.

Wilbur Soot would disagree.

High school was like a game he was playing with himself. It was lonely, sure, but it was entertaining. It was fun.

Wilbur Soot liked to be invisible.

He liked slipping under people’s noses and going through life with nothing but a nudge from the teachers. His average grades could easily go higher if he wished, but he didn’t want them to. The safe spot for grades was directly in the middle, and so he stayed there. He enjoyed being invisible.

Invisibility meant that his secrets were less likely to be discovered; they were less likely to realize that, actually, Wilbur Soot is strange.

He stayed in the same clubs that he had chosen at the start of the year. He stayed in the same friend groups and had the same interests. He just sat back and watched the world zoom past him at incredible speeds. It was like watching a youtube video on x2 speed and trying to make sense of it.

A prod interrupted him from his thoughts. He jerked up, surprised, before glancing to his side. It was just Niki; she had stuck with him since the start of the year. She was a quiet but extroverted girl, and her sweetness could just as easily transform into scariness; striking fear into the hearts of those who trusted her and those who loved her.

Okay, _maybe_ he was overreacting a bit.

The rest of his friend group sat behind him, most of them paying attention, a few chattering to each other in hushed voices. Wilbur glanced at the clock- it was three minutes until the bell rang, and then it was the end of school. That meant going home, practicing his guitar and preparing for band, and-

Oh, fuck.

It was a Wednesday. And Wednesdays were book club days.

He didn’t even _like_ book club.

Now, you may be wondering “Wow, Wilbur! That’s such a dumb thing to sign up for! What, did you make a deal with Satan and he told you he had to join a book club?”

If you would ask him this, he would reply with a short agreement. “Yes.”, or “Yep.”, or “Kind of, yeah.”

It was a bit more complicated than that, sure, but it was more or less correct.

See, Wilbur had an issue with ghosts. It ran in the family- a long line of ancestors have cursed him to to see phantoms and ghouls and other paranormal beings if they allowed him to. Which wouldn’t be a problem in itself, of course. It makes Ouija boards even more fun to play around with.

The rules of an Ouija board are quite simple; sit down, turn out the lights and _always_ say goodbye. Wilbur had always used to follow these rules strictly. He had conducted these rituals enough, however, that he started to loosen.

He’d start leaving the lamp on, first. It wasn’t much. It made the ghosts upset, but they never grew violent. It just made the rituals shorter, and left him with a sick feeling deep in his stomach. He started to do it stood up, after that. Just when he was walking around the house. The ghosts grew aggravated, and the messages were angrier than ever. Wilbur didn’t care to notice.

The next time he opened the Ouija board, no one replied. The planchette twitched, sure, but that was it. There were no ghosts, he believed. So he shut the case without saying goodbye.

He was a fool.

Nothing changed at first. He would go to school, partake in his lessons, come home, practice his guitar and then go to sleep. He’d slip under people’s noses and be transparent for no reason other than entertainment.

Things would go missing, disappearing from where he was sure he had placed them, but he must have just forgotten.

He should have seen the signs. It had started getting colder no matter the weather, no matter what he was wearing. He heard whispers and giggles as he walked down hallways, yet nobody was there. The curtains always rustled and his guitar always strung itself, but he ignored the signals anyway.

As it turns out, he was getting haunted. And he had only realized when he saw the ghost floating behind him to English class, wearing a yellow poncho with a bright blue stab mark in the middle of their chest.

The signs were drilled into Wilbur’s head since he was very young, yet when his parents moved away he had overlooked them in favor of his studies. They had just floated away from him without him realizing, and he just.... forgot them.

It was hard to explain to the nurse why exactly he had collapsed. The ghost had looked so terrified, bless them. He got to have the day off.

He had to make a deal with the ghost, eventually. The ghost was much weaker than others he had seen, and could do the bare minimum of strumming his guitar, but they still managed to get in the way, whether it was chatting loudly in that soft, echoey voice they had or shoving their wierd blue powder into his hands in the middle of an exam. Wilbur didn’t ask for their name, only their pronouns, knowing not to get attached but to still be polite.

The student had asked the ghost to stop interrupting his studies at the start of the year. The ghost was sensitive, it seemed, if their already-watering eyes were anything to go by. He remembered himself stumbling over his words to come up with an excuse, before the Ghost had wobbly stuttered “I understand...”. They looked so upset, and he knew that even now he would never quit the book club in case of making the Ghost upset. _(When had the ghost earned a capital letter? ....Stop it.)_

Wilbur had offered to join the book club hopelessly; he had noticed the Ghost _ (??) _ eyeing the book club notices and leaflets scattered around the school. They weren’t subtle about their interest in books (or maybe it was just the colour blue that flashed on the poster). The Ghost’s face had lit up, a bright grin appearing on their face (Wilbur recalls vaguely that when he had asked about the tears later, the Ghost had seemed to forget crying and only remembered the good parts of the memory).

The Ghost would go invisible whenever he was in a lesson, as long as Wilbur went to the book club every Wednesday. That was the deal.

The sharp sound of the bell ringing brought a wince to his face, interrupting his recounting of his past interactions with the Ghost. He stood up, lugging his bag over his shoulder and sending Niki a small grin, pushing past the blonde and brown-haired children of the class (they were moved a year upwards, so they weren’t really children. They hated being referred to as such, though, so it was funny) and jumping over the germophobic guy at the front’s foot, stopping for a moment. He heard the vague sounds of falling and yells behind him, giggling and hearing a small gasp from over his shoulder, and only then did he walk out the door.

The library was on the top floor, Wilbur remembered with a sigh. He heard the swooshing of a ghost appearing behind him as he stomped up the stairs.

Yeah, Wilbur really wasn’t normal. No one needed to know that, though.


End file.
